The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau is seeking comment on a petition filed by Carolina West Wireless, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Clear Stream Communications, LLC (Carolina West) that requests a limited waiver of the FCC’s rural call completion rules. Pursuant to those rules, long-distance service providers that make the initial long-distance call path choice for more than 100,000 domestic retail subscriber lines, counting the total of all business and residential fixed subscriber lines and mobile phones and aggregated over all of the providers’ affiliates, must comply with call completion recordkeeping, retention, and reporting requirements. Carolina West is seeking a waiver of the rule that requires the subscriber lines of its affiliates to be counted toward the determination of whether Carolina West serves 100,000 subscriber lines. Carolina West contends that its affiliates do not have any influence over Carolina West’s call routing decisions, and states that if the waiver is granted, it would “fall below the de minimis threshold, and would be exempt from the rural call completion data collection and reporting requirements.” Comments on Carolina West’s petition are due on or before December 22, 2014. Reply comments are due December 31, 2014.
